Plasticity into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success

Plasticity into power works out, through historical examples, a major theme of Unger's work--the relation between institutional and organizational flexibility and the development of our collective ability to produce or to destroy. The message of the book is that the practical success of a society depends on its capacity for permanent innovation. Certain practices and institutions--the history and content of which Unger explores--can nurture this capacity. Unger pursues this topic through wide-ranging historical inquiries into the European escape from the recurring crises that foreclosed political and economic breakthroughs in the great empires of the past; the invention of revolutionary approaches to the governmental protection of wealth; and the social conditions of military success, viewed as sources of insight into the social foundations of economic growth. Throughout, Plasticity into Power exemplifies a conception of the relation between theory and history that remains faithful to the surprising, open-ended quality of lived experience.

Review: "[Unger] does not make moves in any game we know how to play ...[His] book may someday make possible a new national romance ... [It] will help the literate ... citizens of some country to see vistas where before they saw only dangers--see a hitherto undreamt-of national future..."-- Richard Rorty "A philosophical mind out of the Third World turning the tables, to become synoptist and seer of the First."-- Perry Anderson